Chapter 30
EMBERLINE
Luca finished off another plate of slightly burned pancakes and bacon and eggs, stretched and announced he needed another nap, then headed for his bedroom.
Valeria was at another council meeting. Hopefully, not stuck making small talk with Blackwood all day while he ogled her, but that was probably too much to expect, given that vampire was a pig.
“I’m out, too. See you in a few hours. Gabriel wants to go over some spy shit.” My husband kissed me on the cheek, grabbed a handful of bacon, and left, leaving me alone with Nico. After last night, I didn’t even know where to start, so I found a sponge and started wiping up grease splatter.
“You really are a slob, you know,” I scolded. “And I’m not your maid.”
“I never said you were.” He tipped his head, smile brightening. “But if you’re interested in some role-playing, I wouldn’t be opposed. I’m free tonight. Maid and master. I already have some ideas.”
“Gods, you’re insatiable,” I murmured, scrubbing at a stubborn spot that wouldn’t come up.
“How about I be the master, and you can be the maid?” I tossed the sponge into the sink and found him watching me with unusual intensity.
“You know, forget I said anything. Actually, we both have better things to do today than work. Come on, let’s go for a walk on the beach. ”
I had questions, and I didn’t want Valeria—or gods forbid, Rocco—walking in on us when I was asking Nico if he’d turned into a giant monster last night in my dream.
“A walk? Ah,” he said gently, stacking the pans in the sink and running water on them, as if that helped. “How much did you hear last night?”
“Everything,” I admitted, hip-checking him out of the way to wash my hands. “And before you say a word, I saw everything, too.”
“Shit,” he muttered. “I really didn’t mean for that to happen.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet not, and yet… it did. We need to talk, Nico. Now get your ass down to the beach.”
“Yes, master.” He bounced his eyebrows up and down. “Your wish is my command.”
A strong breeze whipped my hair around my face and tugged at my clothes. Barefoot, my feet sank into the soft sand with every step, and I didn’t stop walking until we’d rounded the bend and the villa was out of sight.
“First, I want to make it clear I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. Your asshole father woke me up, and I couldn’t help following the sound of your voices. And then I couldn’t stop listening.”
And how those words, uttered with such casual cruelty, would haunt me.
“Pretty weak on the apology front, but I’ll take it.” Nico settled onto the sand just above the tide line. “I’m sorry you had to hear that. He’s never been known to mince words.”
“Hearing about your childhood made me hate him even more than I thought possible.” I dropped down next to him, leaning close enough our shoulders touched. “I’m sorry you had to live like that. Sorry there was no one to protect you from him. Sorry you were all alone.”
“That’s a lot of sorrys in a row, princess. And don’t feel sorry for me. I got out. Walked away and didn’t stop until I’d gone far enough, he could never find me.”
“I can’t even imagine what that was like.” I touched his hand, every piece of my heart aching for the boy he’d once been. “And by sorry, I mean I’d like to eviscerate him for you.”
“Well, that’s much better. I love when you get all murder-y,” he said fondly, emotion blazing in his eyes.
“But I’m afraid you’ll have to get in a very long line.
A line I am currently at the head of. The problem is, killing my father leaves a huge power vacuum in Rome and destabilizes the Bellamorte Dynasty.
There are some decent family heads sitting on the council, but most of them are shit. ”
“Power vacuums within a Dynasty can be dealt with. Your father is a danger to the power structure of our entire world. Not to mention a threat to our lives and our freedom. I, for one, am not bending the knee to that fucker.”
“Severin has a plan in the works to take my father down, but it’ll take time to implement.
First, we need to deal with Giovanni. Kill your uncle, push Blackwood out of Venice, then rebuild the council back to its former strength so he never gets a toehold in Venice again. That’s what makes the most sense.”
“And when did you become privy to this plan?” I huffed.
“This morning when I was cooking breakfast. For your brother, I’ll point out, who seems to be eating for two. Gabriel received the message and relayed it to me. Now I’m relaying it to you.”
Ah, so that’s what Gabriel and Dante were meeting about.
“How are we going to kill him?” I asked. “When he’s been in hiding for weeks? If you’d just let me go to the city, I’m sure I could get into the palazzo and…”
“No,” Nico instantly cut me off. “There will be no more solo outings. They are too dangerous, now that my father has guards inside the city. If there were that many Drax in the Sala del Giuramento, he’s building an army. They’re preparing for war, which means the city will become a battleground.”
“Valeria did say the main focus of yesterday’s business was establishing a perimeter around the Sala del Giuramento. For security purposes.” I peered out over the water, thinking. “Which means they need space to operate with no outside scrutiny.”
“That’s a big building.” Nico slid me a sideways look. “Lots of rooms for nests.”
I shuddered. “If we engage them in Venice, there will be casualties. Human casualties.”
“Many of them,” he agreed. “But human deaths have never concerned my father. Neither do vampire deaths. In fact, death doesn’t seem to concern my father at all,” he said bitterly, his voice fracturing.
“And why is that, Nico? Could it be because he knows who Death really is?”
It was a joke. A guess.
A stab at a truth I knew couldn’t possibly be true.
Nico looked away, down the sprawling beach, where a flock of gulls dove for fish. He wasn’t going to answer. Maybe I didn’t need an answer. I’d had quite enough surprises in my life lately, thank you very much.
“You don’t want to go down this road, Emberline.” Nico’s voice was choked with regret. “Nothing waits at the end but pain. I can’t give you the answers you want. Certainly not the ones you deserve.”
For a moment the silence built between us, and I was tempted—so, so tempted—to take the coward’s way out. To let this one truth lie, undisturbed, until time and a thousand other secrets buried it deep.
But this was Nico.
I loved him. All of him. I couldn’t imagine—not for a single second—there was a part of him I wouldn’t love, that I wouldn’t protect with every piece of me.
“Just tell me the truth, Nico. Why doesn’t death concern your father?”
But Nico just looked down at me sadly. “Because he intends to leash Death, much like he leashed me as a child. Because all he’s ever wanted was power, and if he possessed dominion over Death itself… nothing could stop him. Not us. Not Emilia. Nothing.”
“So, what I saw last night…”
“What you saw last night was not Death, but rather, an Emissary of Death.” He blew out a long breath, raw and exhausted, as if he’d been carrying this burden for a long, long time.
Alone. Always alone.
Well, he wasn’t alone anymore. He had me. And Dante and Gabriel.
Despite the hollow weight at the pit of my stomach, despite the fear making me shiver in the summer heat, I shifted on the sand so I faced him. “Tell me everything, Nico. I want to know who you are, and I’m not afraid of the truth.”
He paused, still debating, clearly torn, jaw working stiffly before he finally answered.
“Think of Death as the ocean, but one of his emissaries as… the waves, breaking on the shore.” We watched the tide roll up to our feet before retreating. “Death is as infinite as the cosmos, but his emissaries… they can appear as many things. Reapers. Ferrymen. Ravens. Even vampires.”
My throat tightened on the truth, even though I told myself I was prepared.
I was not. But I wouldn’t abandon Nico like his father had, now when he deserved so much more. “But I thought that was just a dream, and…”
“I warned you not to go down this road, princess,” he said in a calm, patient tone that sent a shiver straight into the very heart of me.
“Yet here we are, and it’s too late to turn back.
” He stretched his legs out so the foam curled around his heels.
“Ask me anything, and I will tell you everything.”
“Are you the Emissary of Death, Nico?”
“I am a male who was given a second chance, and took it.”
“How?”
His eyes slid to me. “I lied to you before, Emberline. I didn’t walk out of my father’s house when I was twelve.
I was carried. My broken body lay on a pyre and burned.
A sacrifice to my father’s rage and cruelty.
But in that fire, somewhere between this realm and the next, I was offered a choice.
Serve the darkness and live again. I made the deal, if only to get vengeance on my father. ”
I focused on the water, losing myself to the onslaught of blinding rage, the beach smearing as my vision darkened, my insides eviscerated by the truth.
Whatever suffering I could have imagined, this was far, far worse.
Barely able to breathe, I whispered, “How does that even work? If you burned on a pyre, then…”
“I don’t know. I woke in a field in the middle of nowhere.
” He sifted sand through his fingers, letting the grains fall slowly.
“I couldn’t remember how I got there; all I knew was I was free.
I started walking east, and I didn’t stop until I reached the ocean.
From there, I hopped on a freighter, and a week later, found myself in Venice.
Picking pockets, stealing food, sleeping wherever I could find shelter.
I had training—my father had seen to that—so I could fight better than most. I survived.
“One day, I followed some Brotherhood soldiers from the city to the Draconi training grounds and managed to stay hidden for a full week before I was discovered and dragged in front of the Draconi Master. He was… impressed. Severin took me under his wing, and for the first time in my life… I felt like I could belong somewhere.”
“How did you even…” I wanted to know everything. How he’d survived by himself, who had taken care of him when he was sick, my heart flooding full of desperate, useless grief.
I shook my head. “Never mind. And then? When did you meet Gabriel?”
“When I was still a greenback soldier, and Gabriel was chafing under his father’s control.
Severin offered me up as a sparring partner.
Gabriel accepted. Over the next few years, we became close.
Then I was sent to the Fossa to become a Vendetarri.
During a fight, I recognized Dante from a photograph.
Gabriel used me to pass information back and forth, and soon enough, I was their most trusted friend. ”
“So, what I saw last night…”
“Was a mistake,” he snapped. “A foolish mistake. When I’m in a different realm and my emotions run high, I sometimes slip into my other form, and after hiding my secret for decades…
” Nico dragged his hand down his face. “Now he is sure of the truth. That was what my father really wanted last night. For me to reveal myself.”
“What will he do with that information?”
“Come after me with everything he has. Use you and Gabriel and Dante against me. Tighten the screws on the city to draw me out of hiding. And that’s just to start.”
“How…” I clasped my shaking hands together. “How could he use you… or your powers? I mean… he’s pretty powerful on his own.”
“You haven’t exactly… seen me at my worst.” he slanted me a look.
“And I would never use my true powers in this realm; they would be devastating. But he could force me to dreamwalk. Kill his enemies in their sleep. Open doors to different realms. Take him there, where he could corrupt and manipulate and ruin. I never should have volunteered to run the investigation. I shouldn’t have gone to Rome. ”
“So… he burned you on a funeral pyre.” I choked on the words, gagged on them, on all the images they painted inside my head. “And then… there you were. Alive and one of the Draconi Brotherhood. Interrogating him. That had to be a shock.”
“He was so fucking pleased when I showed up in Rome, and he connected the dots,” Nico whispered.
“I sat across from him and saw the wheels turning. And I was foolish, thinking he wouldn’t know who I was.
It had been over thirty years since I’d seen him.
I looked different. I smelled different.
And still, he knew me at first sight. My own arrogance fucked me over. ”
“You need to tell Gabriel and Dante. And Severin. And Emilia. We all have to be on the same page.”
He dragged his hands down his face and stared out over the water. “They won’t understand. I mean, this is ludicrous.”
“Why not? Emilia brought me back from the dead, and my husband has a fire demon trapped inside of him.” I bumped shoulders with him again. He’d told me the truth, and here we were, sitting in the sunshine, the waves still rolling up on the beach, the world still spinning in circles.
“You being an Emissary of Death is hardly a newsflash, Nico.” I managed a grin that didn’t fool him one bit, and he flashed one back at me.
“Around here, it’s just another Tuesday.”